Monday, 30 May 2011

How is everyone doing? I am doing great. I left my planner at the church so I am not sure what happened last week so I'll just try to remember out of my head. Well start with today. I am in Groningen for a district P-day, we played basketball and soccer and are now e-mailing. We will then continue to play sports. Its so much fun cause I have such an awesome district. The Van Komens (senior couple) are so awesome. Last Monday was a good P-day cause we were able to really clean our apartment and get some needed things done. District meeting was good like always and we had some really good lessons again. It sucks that I am so slow at typing cause all the other missionaries next to me are typing so fast. So they can say twice as much as me, but I try. We had a really cool lesson with a Jehovah Witness couple. They were super nice and we learned a lot from each other. On Tuesday we went on X-changes so I worked with Elder Guanuna in Heerenveen. We had a lot of fun, rapping with each other, joking and doing missionary work. On Wednesday we had a sweet lesson with Stella a lady who will soon be baptized and the joint teach we had was really good and had awesome experiences to share. On Thursday night we went and played soccer with the young men in our branch to help them be strong in the faith. It was so much fun. It started raining but that did not stop us. On Friday we ate dinner with this really cool couple who are so nice to everybody. On Saturday we had dinner with a Jovo investigator who is so cool but has some really hard questions. He is really nice and wants to know the truth. Sunday we had a good church service and ate lunch all the way in Emmeloord which is like 1 hour bus ride away. We ate with the junior Van Andel family. It was cool. The rest of the day could have been better but it was kind of a drag. So pretty ineffective. This coming week will probably be my last week in Zwolle. I will let you all know what happens next P-Day. I finally cut my hair today. yeah. Well I don't have much else to say. I love you all.

Monday, 23 May 2011

Sorry that I did not write last week its just when we went to write our e-mails we found out that the Library would be closed till the following week so we went to another library the next day but it turns out that its from the same business chain. I am fine, not hurt or in any way not doing good. So I am doing great. Well I don't even remember what happened last week, hmmm.... let me see. Well we just had a ton of awesome lessons and actually had an excellent week. We almost reached the standard of excellence by one member present lesson. We could not get one to save our lives. Actually on Sunday we were trying to figure out how we can teach someone with a member present when an inactive member walked up to us and started talking to us, I was about to pull someone walking by in to our conversation and teach with the inactive member present. It did not work out. Man the members here are so good at cooking, I mean they just spoil us. I always eat so much cause its just so good. We did service for a lady who has had the missionaries do service for her the last 30 years. She told us that she will not be baptized. We had to tell her that we can no longer do service for her because she is using us and she just said "It doesn't matter, in a year when you are both gone I will make contact with the new missionaries to come help me." She is a super nice lady and gives us food, its just we can spend our time better. Our time is precious. One of our investigators found some info on the Internet so we had to explain that and it was a tough lesson telling him that we are the only church that holds authority ( the priesthood) given from Jesus Christ. A couple of investigators dropped us but we made up by finding more. Yeah. Church was really good last week. We met with an inactive member who is American so we heard some sweet stories from him, he is a really cool guy.

Now for this last week.

Well it started good and on Wednesday we had a zone training which was really good. It was really fun. We have a senior couple in our zone named Bush. So he kept making jokes like "I went hunting with my uncle George" Or he told stories about his uncle and was like "My other uncle, not Uncle George" It was another really busy week and just so awesome. One of our investigators Stella who is actually really close to being baptized is so awesome and sweet. She gave us some food to go and it was this delicious Indonesian food. We had a sweet appointment with a young dutch family who came to the open house. They have two little kids and would be perfect. We taught them the restoration and when we asked when we could come back they said that they just wanted to know what we believe and that they really like family home evening so they will try doing that in their church. Hmmm well we or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints at least inspired them. cool. We had two really cool nice Muslim guys pull us over and had a good conversation. I really respect them and they respect us. Sunday was just awesome, we had 4 investigators stay for sacrament meeting and had also two come just for the first two hours. It was really good. The rest of Sunday was hard cause for a change we had no appointments whatsoever. So we did a ton of finding but did not have much motivation. It was good though, it just felt like a super long day. Today is such a beautiful day. We did a ton of cleaning, I had a good workout, and we get to e-mail. We also have district meeting tomorrow which I am really looking forward to. I am doing awesome and I really appreciate all of your letters and prayers. The first Sunday of June I and all the Europe missions and members in Europe will be fasting for missionary work and have been asked ( the members) to bring at least one friend to church for every week in June. I would like you all to also participate. This will be amazing and I know if we all do that that the work will increase. I love you all and am so happy to be a servant of the lord. I know that my redeemer lives and that his church has been restored through his servant the prophet Joseph Smith. I know that families can be forever. In the Name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.

Monday, 9 May 2011

Well its been another good week. I love my new district and we always have so much fun. Unfortunately we had a positive investigator drop us. He learned a lot from us but wants to believe his own way. There is a young guy well in his 20's who is really cool and is very religious. He is going to college and he asked from himself if we could come more to talk to him so we can see he is interested. Family De Jonge is really cool and so nice. The Father of that family is our Branch President and a cop. We had a good time with them. When we ate dinner with them a friend of his came who has been to Arizona and Vegas and also Death Valley. So we talked about that and it brought back memories of the beautiful desert. Even though I've only been to Death Valley once and that to pick up two ginormous Full grown palm trees, also to drink a date shake. Even if the ride home took 3 times as long it was fun. In our consecrated hours of Finding we seem to almost always find someone who has a little interest. May 5th was a big day here in the Netherlands. It was Freedom day or something like that. They had one of the biggest festivals in all of the Netherlands here in Zwolle. That not only means that there were young people everywhere ( 100 of thousands) and let me tell you there were so many cute girls. Music was super loud you could hear it where ever you went. Also everyone ended up being drunk by the end of the day. These two guys in their 20's wanted us to go party with them so we did....no I'm just kidding. We instead started talking about Jesus Christ and they to my surprise really liked talking about that. It was so hard cause I really wanted to go to the Festival but I was like no its probably expensive. The next day I found out that it was free. I could have talked to so many people about the gospel and rocked out to the music...no jk. This Indonesian lady is making a lot of progress and is so sweet. She makes us really good food. Unfortunately it turns out that she might have Leukemia. On Sunday we had the coolest lady from the Dutch Antilles with her fiancee. They liked it. 3 investigators in church. Also a family from Alpine Utah came. As we were talking it turned out that they know Jacob Schenk. Hahah what a small world. Their name is the Whales. They are the neighbors of Elder Leashman or something like that. Who is serving in Austria. After church we found a really cool guy and he let us in to talk more, he wants us to come back. And then we waited for our families to call us and we were so excited and nervous to talk to them. It was a very special Mothers day.Thank you so much for all the support. I love you all.

Monday, 2 May 2011

Its been another great week, in the mission there were a lot of changes and Zwolle just stayed the same except for the work here is doing really good. We are teaching around 20 lessons every week usually more. The members are so great and feed us really good food. We had 3 investigators in church and it was such a spiritual meeting. We spent an hour today hardcore cleaning and there is still so much to clean. I have no time. I had a really good exchange with Elder Guanuna and he is new so I got to experience being the older missionary. We taught some really good lessons. Unfortunately we had to drop a few of our investigators but we also found more so its all good again. On Saturday it was Koninginnen dag which is the queens day so everyone wears orange and my comp and I both wore orange ties. I don't have so much time to write my email. It has been really nice weather. I love you all.

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Elder Jonathan Ellis

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